London’s Barbican Centre has launched a digital platform to publicise its vast collection of drawings, photos and never-before-seen material that tell the story of the brutalist icon.
Named Lose Yourself in the Barbican, the digital archive was developed in collaboration with Google Arts & Culture with the aim of becoming a permanent asset for the arts centre.
The archive is free to access and features digitised objects that its creators say take viewers on “an adventure through London’s icon of brutalist architecture”.
Among the collection are architectural drawings, photos and objects collected from when the Barbican was designed through to today. Many have never been publicised before.
“Every single object in the archive contains a story of how the Barbican building came to be, how it works, and how artists and residents have made it their home over the years,” said Barbican archive curator Tom Overton.
“People can view them all around the world, for free, and make all sorts of unexpected connections with other objects we could never have imagined.”
Completed in 1982, the Barbican Centre forms part of the Barbican Estate that was designed by British studio Chamberlin, Powell and Bon in the 1950s.
The 40-acre estate is home to more than 4,000 residents and was conceived as a utopian, car-free model for inner-city living.
Work on the Lose Yourself in the Barbican archive began in 2019. It was prompted by an anniversary at the estate that led to people “getting in touch from all around the world and asking to see things from the archive”, Overton said.
“The Barbican has had two big anniversaries recently,” the curator told Dezeen. “50 years for the estate in 2019 and 40 for the centre in 2022.”
“Around the same time, we found ourselves needing to rehouse, catalogue and conserve the thousands of plans and drawings,” he continued. “The Barbican was already working with Google Arts & Culture, so it made sense to speak to them about making this material much more widely available.”
There are more than 3,500 high-resolution images on the online platform, alongside 60 articles that aim to tell the whole story of the estate.
It also uncovers some of the lesser-known details about the complex, such as the strikes that were organised by the construction works of the estate between 1965 to 1969.
“We started with the plans collection, which gives an account of the ways the buildings evolved from Chamberlin, Powell and Bon’s initial vision to where it is now,” Overton explained.
“But we wanted to sketch in the people who actually built it, the people who damaged their health hammering the famous concrete surface – a disproportionate number of whom seem to have been Black – and those who went out on strike because of the working conditions.”
According to Overton, highlights of the archive include signage manuals by graphic designer Ken Briggs and a photograph by Peter Bloomfield documenting the centre’s development.
There are also some more unusual and unexpected objects, such as a pair of shoes.
“There are the shoes we found under Cinema 1, apparently worn out and abandoned by one of the builders alongside a last snack before leaving – Hula Hoops, a can of bitter lemon and a cigarette,” Overton said.
Alongside the digital archive, the Barbican Centre is also showcasing the original architectural scale model of the Barbican Estate from the 1960s, which has been restored.
On display for the first time in over 20 years, it is being displayed within a wider physical archive display on the centre’s mezzanine level that will be updated over time with different objects.
Elsewhere at the Barbican, interdisciplinary design studio Resolve Collective is showcasing an installation crafted from waste salvaged from cultural institutions in London.
In an exclusive video produced by Dezeen, the group discussed how the exhibit is intended to question the role of social institutions by offering a space that is open to interpretation.
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